Jimmy Breslin - giving us the goods about Mafia underworld, its squealers

Published 4:00 am, Monday, February 25, 2008

The Good Rat

ECCO; 270 PAGES; $24.95

In 2006 two former New York City detectives were put on trial in Brooklyn, accused of selling information about wiretaps and informants to the Mafia and of committing murders for the mob. Sitting in the courtroom was Jimmy Breslin, whose beat had been the city and its underworld for 50 years. He was there to see what he hoped would be the first great Mafia trial of the 21st century. What he saw instead confirmed for him the end of a Mafia that bore any resemblance to the one depicted in "The Godfather."

What has destroyed the tradition of omerta, of not informing on fellow gang members, according to Breslin in his new book, "The Good Rat," is the federal law known as the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. "Before RICO the usual federal sentence for gangsters was five years or so. Most tough guys could do that standing on one hand. And they did. That's why there were no rats back then. You kept your mouth shut, did your time, and came home a hero. Once RICO was put in, suddenly there were fifty-year jail terms." The prospect of life in prison was a powerful inducement to cooperate with the district attorney, particularly if the mobster thought his fellow gang members might be turning state's evidence on him to beat raps of their own.

The star witness for the prosecution in the Mafia cops trial was Burt Kaplan, a 72-year-old embezzler, drug dealer, fence for stolen goods and money launderer, who at the time was nine years into a RICO sentence. He was doing something he had always despised - ratting on other criminals - but his wife and daughter wanted him out of prison, and he wanted to see his grandchild before he died. Kaplan's testimony was devastating to the defense. His memory was photographic, and he gave the details of contracts for murder, the receipt of material relating to ongoing police investigations and the amounts paid for such services. When the trial was over, the crooked cops had been sentenced to life plus 100 years.

Breslin has written about organized crime before, both as straight reporting in newspapers and in his 1969 novel, "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight." He grew up in Ozone Park, Queens, where he could walk by the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club. If the door was open, he might catch a glimpse of men wearing hats, smoking and playing cards. By the time he was 20, Breslin was covering gangland trials, due to his background. "Because I came from Queens, which nobody in the history of New York newspapers ever wrote about or even saw, I was reputed to be streetwise and tough. Which was untrue. I didn't fight. I chased stories, not beatings. But I knew where to find people who were somewhat less than our civic best, and so editors clung to the illusion."

In "The Good Rat," Breslin intersperses gangland memories of earlier years with transcripts of the Mafia cops trial. While he can sometimes write sympathetically about an individual tough and appreciates the colorful nature of the breed, Breslin is under no illusions as to their mettle. "You need no complicated thinking to be a gangster. You can be an illiterate in good clothes, and you don't have to work. All through the years, the worst penalty for these men has been honest labor." State lotteries and legal alcohol have cut deeply into the traditional sources of Mafia money. That loss and determined federal prosecution have all but put an end to this brand of organized crime. "The Mafia no longer sends great chords crashing down from the heavens. As it dissolves, you inspect it for what it actually was, grammar-school dropouts who kill each other and purport to live by codes from the hills of Sicily that are actually either unintelligible or ignored."

The demise of the old-time gangster has been Breslin's loss as a reporter. Organized crime stories almost always garnered front-page placement. "In my years in the newspaper business, the Mafia comes down to one thing: circulation. On the Sunday in 1985 that John Gotti started his famous swagger through the city and onto every TV screen in America, the New York Daily News sold 1.8 million papers." Breslin laments the loss of style of the don's ragtag successors and also looks down his nose at his younger counterparts. "Among the saloons in the city today, there are no notorious places known as mob joints. And there are no more meetings between reporters and gangsters in places known for tough guys and neon and loud fun. News reporters get their information from Jerry Capeci's Gang Land on the Internet."

An elegiac tone suffuses "The Good Rat," as Breslin bids good riddance to the mobsters but admits they made his life more exciting. "I stand on Queens Boulevard in front of what once was Pep McGuire's, and I remember nights and crimes, and I am certain that I hold memories possessed by virtually no one else alive." This book means that some of those memories won't die with him.